Free Fireflies by David Morrell

people in the room, all afraid for their own friends or relatives. Eavesdropping unabashedly, they waited for the surgeon’s answer. There are no secrets—privacy is impossible—in the waiting room for Intensive Care.
    “Actually it went better than I expected.” The surgeon rubbed his raw eyes.
    David straightened.
    “I only had to take four of his ribs and a third of his lung.”
    Only? When it comes to your son, and you were told he’d probably have a quarter of his body cut away, you actually feel a bizarre relief when you learn it was only a fifth.
    “Then the roots of the tumor hadn’t spread as far as …”
    “Not as extensively as I feared,” the surgeon said.
    “Then”—David took a breath, afraid to ask—“you actually got it all?”
    The surgeon bit his lip. “No. There’s a growth—it isn’t big, the size of the tip of my little finger—that I had to leave against his spine. It wasn’t just a matter of risking paralysis if I took it. I’d have killed him.”
    The other people waiting apprehensively to hear about their friends or relatives listened more intently.
    “Oh …” David’s voice dropped. He’d been warned not to hope, and yet he had hoped, and now he suffered the despairing consequences.
    “As I told you, no matter how well the procedure went, I knew I wouldn’t get what I wanted: total surgical cure.”
    “Then we go to bone marrow,” David said.

7

    Matthew was strong. David had promised the surgeons that, and the degree of Matt’s strength was about to be proven. Matt’s surgery had been so severe—“The most painful there is to recover from,” the surgeon explained—that Matt had been scheduled for two days of intensive care instead of the usual one.
    Nonetheless, twenty-four hours later, Matt’s tortured body had so responded to postoperative treatment that he could be moved back to his room on the Pediatrics Ward.
    “You were right. You son’s constitution is remarkable,” the surgeon said. Then turning to Matt, who was conscious though groggy from pain medication, he added, “But Matt, I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep being tough on you. I can’t let you rest. I can’t let fluids accumulate in your system. You’re going to have to stand as soon as possible. You’re going to have to make your bladder work.”
    Matt groaned. “Stand?”
    “As soon as you’re able. The important thing is you have to pee. I don’t want to have to put a catheter back into your penis.”
    Matt groaned again.
    The surgeon’s pager made a beeping sound. From the small black box on his hip, a voice announced a telephone number for him to call.
    “I’ll be right back,” the surgeon said.
    Donna, Sarie, and a nurse followed the surgeon out, leaving David and Matthew alone.
    David hesitated. “How are you doing, son?”
    “I hurt.”
    “I bet.”
    Another pause.
    “Well, let’s get it over with,” Matt murmured.
    “What?”
    “If I have to stand”—Matt groaned—“and pee, let’s do it now so I can sleep.”
    God’s honest truth. That’s what he said. And don’t be surprised that he could talk, much less be able to move. Maybe in the movies, patients are unconscious for days after serious surgery, while the actors have meaningful conversations at the bedside. But in real life, the physicians want you alert as soon as possible. In Intensive Care, Matt had been conscious enough and alert enough to write notes (his mouth had been blocked by a tube driving oxygen into his lungs) two hours out of surgery.
    “The pain’ll just keep on,” Matt murmured. “He told me to stand. Let’s do it. Help me.”
    Somehow, despite the oxygen prongs attached to Matt’s nostrils … and the IV tube leading into his arm … and the tubes draining blood from an incision that curved from Matt’s right shoulder blade down to his waist, then around his waist and up to his right nipple … somehow David and Matthew got Matthew out of bed.
    Matt gingerly placed his